Tuesday, September 4, 2007

An Emerging Theme: ABAC & Corporate Social Responsibility

I have had a very busy and interesting day. I spent the morning at the Hilton interviewing ABAC members. My group had the opportunity to interview one of the three U.S representatives to ABAC, Michael Phillips. (This was apparently a big deal because U.S. representatives rarely meet with participants in VTM). Phillips is the chairman of Russell Investment Group, and he served as the chief executive officer from 1993 to 2003.

Corporate Social Responsibility is an emerging theme for the ABAC members, and Phillips offered insight into the concept. He discussed both the necessity to be environmentally responsible and to assist developing donations by helping them to build wealth by strengthening market mechanisms. He explained that Russell has endeavored to reduce their carbon footprint by encouraging telecommunicating and by its continued support of ABAC’s commitment to address the issues of global warming and climate change. Phillips explained the significance of the Bogor Goals, and he elaborated on the necessity of countries such as South Africa assisting other developing countries within Africa by serving as a role model for those countries. Realistically, Phillips noted that efforts to maintain Corporate Social Responsibility would reduce the return on shares, but he noted that wealth maximization could not be the ultimate goal of socially responsible corporation in the globalized economy.

After speaking with Michael Phillips, we then met with Mark Johnson, the Executive Director of Macquarie and the Deputy Chairman of ABAC. Pete was also a part of this meeting, and I will let him elaborate on the encounter.

After leaving the Hilton, my group toured the International Media Center which is the central location for APEC officials and over 2,200 credentialed journalists. We were able to observe a “doorstop” with Australia’s Minister of Trade, the Honorable Warren Truss. Truss welcomed us to Australia, and briefly elaborated on the necessity of trade liberalization. His advisors were keeping him to a very tight schedule, and he was whisked away before any of us had the opportunity to ask him any probing questions.

We then had the opportunity to sit in on a briefing with the Chief Economist of AusTrade, Tim Harcourt. Harcourt elaborated on a survey that AusTrade conducted in order to better understand how Australian companies perceive APEC. He explained that there were 300 companies that participated in the survey, and that the majority of these companies view APEC as their future. These companies were asked to identify the top five countries with which they hoped to trade in the future, and 93% of these countries were APEC countries. Ultimately, many of these countries were concerned that APEC and ABAC work to facilitate trade by streamlining customs and regulations throughout the region.

I am exhausted, and I have another full day tomorrow. It has been great to interact with the APEC and ABAC members, and I only wish we had more opportunities to meet with the various delegations.

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